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Three Measures of Unemployment

The FRED Blog has an interesting assessment of unemployment, as measured by the 4-Week Moving Average of Initial Claims, Civilian Unemployment Rate and Average (Mean) Duration of Unemployment:

Take note especially of the Average (Mean) Duration of Unemployment – this corresponds to the “Scariest jobs chart ever” at Calculated Risk. From the FRED Blog using the analogy of the “unemployment bathtub”:

Economists often find a bathtub to be a useful metaphor for the behavior of unemployment. There’s some inflow of newly unemployed workers and some outflow as workers find jobs. A classic way to measure the inflow has been with initial claims of unemployment benefits, the blue line, in which we see spikes at the start of each recession. This inflow of newly unemployed persons initially reduces the mean duration of unemployment, the green line. But the green duration line rises as the blue initial claims line falls—since people who become unemployed early in the recession and remain so are unemployed for a while by the time the recession winds down. Every recession follows this pattern: Claims peak, then unemployment peaks, then duration peaks. The logic is essentially that of the bathtub: First it fills quickly; then, after some time, it begins to drain. But as this is happening, those left in tub have been there longer and longer.

The alarming measurement was just how long it took to reach pre-recession peak levels of jobs lost – a level reached “April 2014 with revisions.” Since we have met and exceeded this level for some time, the concerns now turn to issues such as the levels of employment (part-time temporary vs. full-time) as well as the “quality of jobs.”